Dissecting Google Analytics Reports: Location

Welcome to the fourth post in our Dissecting Google Analytics Reports blog series! The data that Google Analytics is able to track and gather about your website visitors is truly phenomenal. This week we’re exposing how you can determine where your visitors are located. You may be thinking, So what? Why should I care where my visitors are located? Well, there are at least three solid reasons why it would be worth your while to check out this data:

Visitors from different locations may visit different information on your website.

This data can be used to gage effectiveness of regional marketing campaigns.

The data can also be used to locate possible expansion areas.

Finding Your Google Analytics Visitor Location Information

After logging in to your Google Analytics account, navigate to Location by clicking on Audience and then Geo. Within the Location window you can see how many people have viewed your website in a given time frame on a global scale all the way down to a city scale.

Where are my visitors located?

While browsing through your report remember to think critically about the numbers you are viewing. Try to determine what the data is implying about your business and your marketing efforts. Follow along as we dissect our website visitors by location to give you a better idea of what to look out for.

Global Visitors

The first screen you’ll encounter in Google Analytics upon viewing your visitors by location will be an overview of your website visitors on a global scale. As a company based in America, it’s no wonder why such a large percentage of our visitors come from the United States. However, it’s interesting to see the different countries also visiting our website.

If you notice that a significant amount of traffic is coming from outside countries, take a look at what content is specifically drawing them into your site by adding a secondary dimension. Click on Secondary Dimension, then Behavior and then Landing Page to see which page of your website is attracting foreign visitors. This can help you understand what type of information your global visitors are interested in. If you want to expand your company to exist more prominently on a worldly scale you can work to create more content similar to what your visitors on other continents are already looking at.

Visitors by State

From the global view you have the option to click on United States to see a more detailed analysis of your website visitors by state. As you can see from the screenshot of our report, Missouri and California bring in the most traffic. If a large amount of your traffic is not coming from your service area one explanation may be that another business exists with a similar name.

It can be surprising and rewarding to see that your website is popular in so many states, especially if you run a smaller, local business, like MayeCreate. Reviewing this type of data offers a glimpse at the power you have to influence people across the nation.

If you’re running a marketing campaign to attract visitors from specific regions, you can use location data to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign. Compare the number of visitors to your website from a specific state for a time-frame before the campaign to how many visitors you attracted from that state during and after the campaign. Did your sessions increase?

Visitors by City

Not only can Google Analytics track visitors by state, it can also show you the number of visitors your website attracts by city. Realizing that your content, products and services are useful to people from the East Coast, the West Coast and everywhere in between may fuel your desire to expand your business. You can use the visitors by city data to determine where your business has the biggest potential to thrive and perhaps you’ll consider opening a new office in that area.

Content Comparison by City

Another step you can take from here is comparing the content that draws visitors from different cities to your website. Again, you can do this by adding “Landing Page” as a secondary dimension. Since Columbia, MO. and Los Angeles are two cities that bring in a lot of traffic to our website, we wanted to see the top three pages people from those geographical areas visit.

Click to view larger image.

As you can see, the top three pages for Columbia are:

MayeCreate Homepage – The forward slash on its own indicates that the page being visited is the homepage of the website.